A Hybrid Isolator to Reduce Electromagnetic Interactions Between Tx/Rx Antennas

A hybrid compact isolator with a cross section of 17 × 11 mm² is proposed to reduce the electromagnetic coupling between two vertically polarized Tx/Rx microstrip antennas, both operating at 9.4 GHz. This isolator is built by embedding a piece of artificial material between two metallic walls. The obtained results using this hybrid isolator demonstrate that the coupling between the two antennas is significantly reduced across at least 55% of the matching band. To substantiate the proposed configuration, a prototype is fabricated and tested, and the corresponding measured results are presented. Furthermore, the discrepancies between the simulations and measurements are interpreted with the aid of the electromagnetic (EM) simulator.